The teeming earth did never bring, When mountains heap'd on mountains fail’d. Sometimes having succeeded in the first part, he makes a feeble conclusion. In the song of "Sacharissa's and Amoret's Friendship," the two last stanzas ought to have been omitted. His images of gallantry are not always in the highest degree delicate. Then shall my love this doubt displace, But make my constant meals at home. Some applications may be thought too remote and unconsequential; as in the verses on the Lady Dancing: The sun in figures such as these To the sweet strains they advance, Which do result from their own spheres ; As this nymph's dance Moves with the numbers which she hears. Sometimes a thought, which might perhaps fill a distich, is expanded and attenuated till it grows weak and almost evanescent. Chloris! since first our calm of peace Her fruit, and state, while no wind blows, With treasure from her yielding boughs. His images are not always distinct; as, in the following passage, he confounds Love as a person with Love as a passion: Some other nymphs, with colours faint, The coldest breast, the rudest tame. His sallies of casual flattery are sometimes elegant and happy, as that in return for the Silver Pen; and sometimes empty and trifling, as that upon the Card torn by the Queen. There are a few lines written in the Duchess's Tasso, which he is said by Fenton to have kept a summer under correction. It happened to Waller, as to others, that his success was not always in proportion to his labour. Of these pretty compositions, neither the beauties nor the faults deserve much attention. The amorous verses have this to recommend them, that they are less hyperbolical than those of some other poets. Waller is not always at the last gasp; he does not die of a frown, nor live upon a smile. There is, however, too much love, and too many trifles. Little things are made too important; and the Empire of Beauty is represented as exerting its influence further than can be allowed by the mul tiplicity of human passions, and the variety of human wants. Such books, therefore, may be considered as showing the world under a false appear ance, and, so far as they obtain credit from the young and unexperienced, as misleading expectation, and misguiding practice. Of his nobler and more weighty performances, the greater part is panegyrical: for of praise he was very lavish, as is observed by his imitator, Lord Lansdowne: No satyr stalks within the hallow'd ground, But queens and heroines, kings and gods abound; In the first poem, on the danger of the prince on the coast of Spain, there is a puerile and ridiculous mention of Arion at the beginning; and the last paragraph, on the cable, is in part ridiculously mean, and in part ridiculously tumid. The poem, however, is such as may be justly praised, without much allowance for the state of our poetry and language at that time. The two next poems are upon the King's behaviour at the death of Buckingham, and upon his Navy. He has, in the first, used the pagan deities with great propriety: 'Twas want of such a precedent as this Made the old heathens frame their gods amiss. In the poem on the Navy, those lines are very noble which suppose the King's power secure against a second deluge; so noble, that it were almost criminal to remark the mistake of centre for surface, or to say that the empire of the sea would be worth little if it were not that the waters terminate in land. The poem upon Sallee has forcible sentiments; but the conclusion is feeble. That on the Repairs of St. Paul's has something vulgar and obvious; such as the mention of Amphion; and something violent and harsh as, So all our minds with his conspire to grace Which the glad saint shakes off at his command, As once the viper from his sacred hand. So joys the aged oak, when we divide The creeping ivy from his injured side. Of the two last couplets, the first is extravagant, and the second mean. His praise of the Queen is too much exagge rated; and the thought, that he "saves lovers, by cutting off hope, as gangrenes are cured by lopping the limb," presents nothing to the mind but disgust and horror. Of the Battle of the Summer Islands, it seems not easy to say whether it is intended to raise terror or merriment. The beginning is too splendid for jest, and the conclusion too light for seriousness. The versification is studied, the scenes are diligently displayed, and the images artfully amplified; but as it ends neither in joy nor sorrow, it will scarcely be read a second time. The panegyrick upon Cromwell has obtained from the publick a very liberal dividend of praise, which however cannot be said to have been unjustly lavished; for such a series of verses had rarely appeared before in the English language. Of the lines some are grand, some are graceful, and all are musical. There is now and then a feeble verse, or a trifling thought; but its great fault is the choice of its hero. There The poem of the War with Spain begins with lines more vigorous and striking than Waller is accustomed to produce. The succeeding parts are variegated with better passages and worse. is something too far-fetched in the comparison of the Spaniards drawing the English on by saluting St. Lucar with cannon, to lambs awakening the lion by bleating. The fate of the Marquis and his Lady, who were burnt in their ship, would have moved more, had the poet not made him die like the Phoenix, because he had spices about him, nor expressed their affection and their end by a conceit at once false and vulgar : Alive, in equal flames of love they burn'd, The verses to Charles, on his return, were doubtless intended to counterbalance the Panegyrick on Cromwell. If it has been thought inferior to that with which it is naturally compared, the cause of its deficience has been already remarked. The remaining pieces it is not necessary to examine singly. They must be supposed to have faults and beauties of the same kind with the rest. The Sacred Poems, however, deserve particular regard; |